Iraq seeks multibillion dollar fee to receive Isis prisoners

Baghdad in talks with US to receive remnants of terror group held in detention centres in Syria

Martin Chulov in Beirut and Julian Borger in Washington
Wed 10 Apr 2019 18.05 BST Last modified on Wed 10 Apr 2019 21.10 BST

Baghdad and Washington are in talks to transfer and place on trial tens of thousands of suspected Isis fighters and their families from detention centres in Syria to prison camps in Iraq, with Iraqi officials seeking a multibillion dollar fee to receive remnants of the terror group captured over five years of war.

Discussions about what to do with Isis members, among them thousands of foreign men, women and children, have been pushed intensively by US officials, who have also lobbied coalition partners to remove their citizens from two cramped detention centres in Syria’s north-east, which one former senior US official described as a “volcano”.

Baghdad has asked for a $10bn (£7.6bn) fee up front, then $1bn per annum to receive the detainees, senior western officials have told the Guardian. The size of the mooted price tag has led some in Washington and London to view it as a rebuff of a US plan, rather than a willingness to take a stake in a politically sensitive and dangerous operation, just as a war-weary Iraq had begun to recover.

Other Iraqi pre-conditions include no access for humanitarian workers to any facilities on Iraqi soil, or objection to the death penalty. Neither is likely to fly with Britain or France, which remain opposed to sending its citizens to countries that carry out executions.

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